1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to packet data transmission. More particularly, and not by way of any limitation, the present invention is directed to a method and system for encoding packet interdependency in a packet data transmission system.
2. Description of Related Art
In some packet data transmission systems, packets carrying data exhibit interdependency, e.g., packets relating to compressed video sequences, where some packets of the data stream have payloads that depend on the contents of other packets in a sequence. While allowing such interdependency is useful in bandwidth management, it does give rise to certain issues that must be addressed. For instance, if it is necessary to drop packets at a point in the transmission system (due to congestion, as an example), it becomes important to have some knowledge of the packet interdependency so that packets on which other packets depend are not preferred for dropping.